Cape Town’s mayor-in-waiting is not the kind of man who waits around. At 34, Geordin Hill-Lewis has already been in the thick of SA politics for a decade. And the promotions have come thick and fast. In 2011 he was sworn in as a Democratic Party MP, aged 24 years and seven months. For the past two years he served as Shadow Minister of Finance in Parliament.
Now the DA’s mayoral candidate in its stronghold, Hill-Lewis is campaigning on the platform of ending load-shedding for the Mother City. In our interview yesterday, he referred to “kicking open the door” that opened a crack after Eskom supply shortages forced the ANC (despite ministerial resistance) to legalise licence-free power plants of up to 100MW. That’s 100 times the previous cap.
Cape Town has a daily peak of 2 000MW of electricity. Each stage of Eskom load-shedding drops its supply by 100MW. Hill-Lewis says the city has 100MW in reserve through its Steenbras hydroelectric power set-up, so securing up to 500MW from independent producers would practically end load-shedding. Although Eskom’s scale goes up to Level 8, highest yet applied was Level 6.
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After a decade and a half of power cuts, SA businesses appreciate the value of uninterrupted electricity – both to operate centrally and for home-based staff. Cape Town already has the lowest municipal rates of any SA metro, a function, it claims, of efficient governance. Ending load-shedding would turn the city into an even more powerful magnet.
More for you today (click on linked headline to access) –
* SAA Phoenix is like a start-up with huge secret assets – CCO Simon Newton-Smith. Listening to my interview with the well-travelled airline veteran who has a key role at the national airline, you’re sure to see light for the embattled operation. In short: they’re now running SAA like a business.
* Elon Musk vs Charlie Ergen: Battle of Billionaires over spectrum. The two moguls want rules to favour their visions for high-speed broadband service available cheaply all over the world. Is there space enough for both of them?
* Now is not the time for DA bashing. BizNews community member and BNIC regular Graham McIntosh takes issue with RW Johnson’s analysis in his July Days article.
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